When Alex Anthopoulos finally decided on the manager he wanted, he told Paul Beeston, his boss. Beeston replied: “Are you serious?”

Which pretty much sums up the reaction of many Toronto Blue Jays fans to the news that John Gibbons, a plain-talking Texan who reminds no one of John Farrell, is back for a second tour in the hot seat.

This was the general manager’s choice, plain and simple. Damn the optics, Anthopoulos said. He liked Gibbons the first time around, when Anthopoulos, then assistant GM, used to sit around for hours talking baseball with the man everyone calls “Gibby,” whom he first met when Gibbons was a coach.

TORONTO — Paul Beeston knew he could sell the deal, because he really wanted to sell the deal. He was going to ask Rogers Communications to commit to about US$166-million in player contracts for the Toronto Blue Jays, which was like asking for two extra 2012 payrolls, but he was confident. “You might not see another deal like this for five years,” he said Tuesday morning, holding black coffee he had barely touched. “I could sell it, because I believed in it.”

The Blue Jays finally addressed their whirlwind week on Tuesday morning, talking about the 12-player trade that brought back all-stars Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle, the free-agent signing of Melky Cabrera, and the second go-around of John Gibbons as the team’s manager. It was a revolution for a team that was getting as stale as the air in the Rogers Centre.

“If you look at what the front office has done the last couple weeks, this gets everybody’s attention,” said Gibbons, who remains the precise opposite of John Farrell, personality-wise. “This gets everybody’s attention. I mean, this is serious stuff now. Who wouldn’t want to be here?”

Serious stuff, now. It started with the trade, which is still the heart of all this strange sports-related optimism burbling around the water coolers and barstools of Toronto. General manager Alex Anthopoulos asked the Miami Marlins about the sought-after Johnson, and the Marlins asked for Adeiny Hechavarria and Justin Nicolino; Anthopoulos walked out and thought it was a steep price, so hell, let’s see if we can expand this. Knowing Florida tends to be aggressive when it moves, he asked about Reyes and Buehrle; the Marlins said OK, let’s discuss it. Next thing you know, he was telling Beeston, and Beeston, in his irascible way, was saying, “Are you sh—— me?”

And Beeston figured he could get it approved, because he and Anthopoulos had always been promised that when the right deal came along, the money would be there. The Jays had sought and received budgetary approval last season for an unnamed difference-making player making about US$20-million, but the deal fell through; there was another big-ticket move in this off-season that was approved but fell through, too. The money would be there. And it was.

It was, in one deal, a culmination of everything Anthopoulos has worked towards since taking the job three years ago. Trading Roy Halladay, overhauling the scouts, pumping the minor-league system full of draft picks, building the back end of the operation, and now, boosting the major-league roster. Since Gibbons was fired in 2008, only Adam Lind and maybe Dustin McGowan are projected to still be on the 40-man roster when spring training begins.

And then, the nightmare season of 2012, in which the starting pitching was shredded, the bats weren’t enough, Yunel Escobar genuinely enraged the organization, and the manager took his stiff politician’s act to Boston. And now Anthopoulos has a manager he trusts — albeit one who elicited just as much surprise from Beeston as the trade did — a switch-hitting, speed-and-power lineup, and a rotation that only needs some shoring up at the back end. This past week, with its promise and its dangers and everything else it represents, is what he has been building towards since he took the job.

I mean, this is serious stuff now. Who wouldn’t want to be here?

“We haven’t won, though,” Anthopoulos said. “We’re going for it, but I think we’re still protected, though. It’s not like this team’s going to fall off a cliff, we don’t have any prospects left, the payroll’s going to be a mess. We’re going for it, but we still have [Jose] Bautista and [Edwin] Encarnacion under control for four years, four years plus an option. Hopefully [Ricky] Romero bounces back, we have Romero under contract, Johnson’s got one year left but we’ve been pretty successful at extending guys when we’ve wanted to. We have Reyes for five years. We have a core in place, we have flexibility going forward, we’re still getting a draft pick this year, so I think we’re protected.

“But attendance is climbing, TV ratings are soaring, we’re bringing in more money, I don’t know to what level, but that cushions it. It fits. And it’s kind of the time. You start asking yourself, am I going to be the GM with two middle-of-the-order 40-home-run bats under contract for four years and not go for it? It’s like Manny [Ramirez] and [David] Ortiz; you can’t draft those kinds of guys, because they’re so hard to find.

“I think we fast-forwarded.”

Anthopoulos says that when he brings up a player, Beeston can rattle off the top of his head what that player is worth to the team’s bottom line, and after 40 years in the business, Beeston is usually right. Beeston had no hesitation about this deal. There is risk to all of it — Reyes’ hamstrings, Buehrle’s age, Johnson’s one-year contract, Cabrera’s rapid and possibly temporary two-year improvement that was punctuated by a season-ending suspension for synthetic testosterone. As Beeston puts it, “You can win 95 games and not get in, although I don’t think so with the [second] wild-card. But if we can play games that matter at the end of September …”

I think right now we can have a very competitive team, a team that can contend, right now

As Anthopoulos notes, there is cushioning left over. If Colby Rasmus gets expensive or falters, there is Anthony Gose. If J.P. Arencibia gets expensive or becomes a trade chip, Travis D’Arnaud is in the system. Anthopoulos still wants more starting arms, and maybe a platoon bat at first, but when asked if this is a contending team as presently constituted, he nods.

“It is, but I like to worry,” Anthopoulos said. “I don’t like being comfortable, I think it keeps you on your toes … I think we’re better, obviously, we added a lot of talent, but we’ve seen what happened in Oakland and Baltimore. I just think we have to constantly get better. I think right now we can have a very competitive team, a team that can contend, right now.”